


Cabin Fever

by marycontraire



Series: Don’t Say It’s Over [3]
Category: Mighty Ducks (Movies)
Genre: Future Fic, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, My Joshua Jackson Thirst Shows No Signs of Abating, Not the fluffy affirming coming out fic you’re looking for, That is actually more like present day fic, This fic is less subtle than The Outsiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:55:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marycontraire/pseuds/marycontraire
Summary: Charlie starts a fight.  Adam makes a choice.
Relationships: Adam Banks/Charlie Conway
Series: Don’t Say It’s Over [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588756
Comments: 14
Kudos: 77





	Cabin Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure how many more of these I’m going to do, but these boys are still talking to me. This one is super-short, so I didn’t bother my beta with it.

Adam can tell that Charlie’s gearing up to start a fight with him by the way he fucks him. That insight, in and of itself, is something of a luxury for Adam: he’s never before bedded the same partner long enough to learn their tells as he has Charlie’s. 

Paradoxically, Charlie is roughest when he’s in a very good mood — particularly if he’s won a case. It’s as though he simply can’t contain his energy within his own body and must send great waves of it into Adam’s. When he’s feeling insecure, he becomes a torturous tease, more interested in manipulating Adam’s pleasure than in pursuing his own, as though his ability to make Adam’s body respond to his command provides him some necessary reassurance. On mornings like this, though, when he’s angry with Adam, he becomes proprietary and desperately clingy. Adam wonders whether it’s entirely subconscious or whether Charlie’s aware of what he’s doing: pulling Adam closer as he readies himself to push him away. 

Regardless of his mood, Charlie remains staunchly insistent upon eye contact, even to the point of abandoning sexual encounters if Adam is unable to look at him. Adam thought that part would get easier as he grew accustomed to it, but it hasn’t; he can’t shake his irrational conviction that Charlie can see every one of his shameful secrets and desires in his eyes, while Adam can see only Charlie’s inescapable sway over him.

He’s granted a brief reprieve from this scrutiny when Charlie rolls off to dispose of the condom and dampen a washcloth for the mess, but, as is typical of Charlie, release has done nothing to tire him or abate his clinginess. When he returns to the wreck they’ve made of the bed, he ignores the kicked-off duvet and instead pulls Adam more tightly against him, burying a hand in Adam’s hair and his face in Adam’s neck; Adam can feel the contrasting sensations of his lips and beard raising goose flesh that quickly spreads down his body. The cabin windows are open, and the early dawn breeze off Lake Superior is cold even in June. He debates pushing Charlie off and getting up to reclaim the duvet from the floor, but unlike Charlie he’s weighed down by post-coital lethargy. It seems easier to press himself more firmly against the warm body beside him. 

As it turns out, this is a mistake.

“I guess we should change these sheets before Les and Connie arrive,” Charlie says. He’s obviously trying to sound conversational, but his pointedness is equally obvious.

“Jesus Christ, here we go,” Adam says. 

“No, I’m just saying,” Charlie says. “Les and Connie _might_ peek in here. Wouldn’t want them to see this mess and get any ideas.” Charlie rolls away, leaving Adam cold in the center of the mattress, and he stands to fish a pair of athletic shorts out of the dresser. Apparently the clingy lead-up to the argument is over; Adam braces himself for a barrage of self-righteous Conway hostility. Ironically, Adam generally finds Charlie attractive in his anger — it’s a different matter, though, when its full force is aimed at him. Adam is about as good at confrontation as he is at vulnerability. 

“You don’t actually have to sleep in the guest room, Charlie,” Adam says wearily. “Just move your shit in there so it _looks_ like you are.”

“That is so completely beside the point I’m making, and you know it, Adam. You’re not stupid, so don’t pretend to be.” Charlie is now half dressed in the shorts, looming at the foot of the bed, gesturing angrily. In the low-angled dawn light, the planes of his face and shadow of his beard make him look far more severe than usual. 

Adam decides it’s time to arm himself with some clothes — he rolls off the bed and reclaims the sweatpants Charlie pulled off him earlier. “I know what point you’re making, Conway. You’ve been pretty dogged on the subject, and, frankly, it’s exhausting.”

“Well, go back to sleep then. You have the bed all to yourself,” Charlie says. 

He exits the bedroom with a slam of the door, but it swings open again mere seconds later and Charlie leans back through the doorway, doing his angry-pointed-finger routine in Adam’s general direction. “And _by the way_ , calling me by my last name doesn’t magically erase the fact that I’ve been fucking you for months, and I very much doubt it would convince anyone with a modicum of intuition of our fictitious heterosexuality. Just so you know.”

Another slam follows. Law school really did wonders for Charlie’s propensity for having the last word and making it count.

Adam’s freezing cold, but he knows it’s not the breeze from the open window anymore. He’s sweating and his heart is racing — he has enough anatomical knowledge to recognize when he’s in the grips of an adrenaline rush. His hands shake as he pulls a t-shirt and fleece pullover out of the drawer and over his head. 

Before his return to Minneapolis, before Charlie, all he had to fear was the discovery of his secret. It was a familiar terror, and it was easy to run when all danger lay in one clear direction. Now, though, he has to fear losing Charlie as well. It’s not as though they didn’t both see this coming from the very start, but during the hockey season Charlie tolerated putting their brewing trouble on a back burner.

He’s not tolerating it anymore, and Adam _is_ exhausted by being this terrified all the time. More than a month into his off-season muscle-building diet and exercise routine, he’s only managed to put on four pounds. His trainer has been making noises about sending him to a doctor for a full work up, which Adam knows would be useless — he doubts the NHL’s version of a full work up includes psychological assessment and couple’s counseling. 

Adam heads down the cabin’s stairs to the kitchen to brew himself some tea — he wants something warm, but the last thing he needs right now is coffee. Calling this house a ‘cabin’ is perhaps a bit misleading — it has four bedrooms and a grand view of Lake Superior from atop a cliff side. The house is, however, built in that scaled-up log cabin style that was so popular in the eighties when many of these North Shore homes were built. The interior remains an untouched homage to the eighties as well — in the ten years he’s owned it, Adam hasn’t redone any part of the house save the gym in the garage. 

His mother’s asked him why — particularly when he hired the renovation company for the remodel of his parents’ house — and Adam said the cabin was perfectly functional and that was all he cared about. It’s a half-truth; the cabin _is_ perfectly functional. There are, however, some unfortunate laminate countertops he’d probably get rid of were he not terrified of developing any sort of taste in interior design or fashion or anything else the Queer Eye guys excel at. Not that Adam’s seen Queer Eye — he doesn’t watch shows like that. 

Oddly enough, though, his reluctance to drag the cabin into the twenty-first century has helped him convince Charlie to spend some time up here this summer. Charlie’s lifelong resentment of material wealth has only deepened since he made the professional — and in his eyes moral — decision to forgo pursuing it himself despite his degree. Adam doubts he’d see much of Charlie this summer if he were hiding out in the sort of summer McMansion so many of his NHL colleagues seem to own.

Adam tosses a bag of chamomile into one of his insulated tumblers and pours the hot water over it. He takes it with him to the living room — he can see Charlie now through the bank of windows there. He’s standing at the edge of the cliff, still clad only in his shorts, silhouetted against the fierce pinks and oranges of the Lake Superior sunrise before him. 

Adam’s breath stops when he jumps. He can physically feel a fresh surge of adrenaline flooding his veins. His hands are slippery with sweat, and he nearly drops the tumbler of tea.

He should really be used to this by now, though Charlie gave him quite a shock the first time he came up here. They were both standing near the cliff’s edge, marveling at the view (or so Adam thought), when Charlie asked him about how deep the water was (very) and whether there was beach access just up there (yes, about a quarter mile up, the neighbor has a stair to it and is friendly). Then, out of nowhere, Charlie just kicked off his flip flops and jumped. 

Adam’s owned this property for a decade; it never occurred to him to jump off the edge.

Trying now to calm his racing heart with measured breathing, Adam grabs a towel from the cabinet by the washing machine and heads out to the deck to wait for Charlie to return, soaked, via the neighbor’s lawn. The neighbors love him, of course. Everyone loves Charlie Conway. 

“Hey,” Charlie says somewhat sheepishly a few minutes later, crossing the grass bare-chested and dripping. In the still-pink wash of sunlight he’s stunningly beautiful, and, for now if not for long, he is Adam’s. 

Adam descends the porch steps to hand him the towel, but Charlie waves it off. “Gonna go again in a minute,” he says. “Just leave it there.” Adam sets it on the wooden porch rail.

“Look,” Charlie says. “I’m sorry for being an asshole earlier.”

Adam shrugs. “I’d rather you be an asshole than pretend this isn’t a problem.”

“Well,” Charlie says, “it’s certainly that.”

Adam fiddles with the cuff of his fleece pullover. “You’re going to make me choose, aren’t you.”

Charlie sighs and scrubs his hand through his wet hair. “I’ve been in enough relationships to know—” he starts.

“Relationships with women,” Adam says.

“Relationships with women, yes,” Charlie says. “I personally don’t think that bears any relevance to our current situation, though I acknowledge that you disagree with me on that point.”

“Such a fucking lawyer,” Adam mumbles. 

Charlie smiles, indulgently but briefly. “I’ve been in enough relationships to know that when you issue an ultimatum, you usually get the opposite of the result you’re hoping for.”

Adam grunts.

“And I admit that it would be objectively a poor decision to tell Les and Connie today, in a few hours, when you haven’t even told your parents or your brother. So I’ll move my shit to the guest room.”

“Thank you,” Adam says, feeling a desperate spike of optimism.

 _“However,”_ Charlie continues. “I cannot keep lying to my friends and family about this, Adam. I _hate_ liars. My father — the real one — was a liar. And I don’t have your seemingly limitless tolerance for self-loathing.”

“Jesus, Charlie,” Adam says.

“No, I’m honestly not even saying that to be an asshole,” Charlie says, wrapping one wet hand around the back of Adam’s neck. It’s half comforting, half invasive, because of course he then tries to make Adam meet his eye. “I don’t know if you’re even aware of it, or if it’s been going on so long you just don’t notice, but you’re ashamed of yourself _all the time_. It’s… honestly, it’s kind of hard to watch.”

“Oh thank you for that sage advice, person who has been bisexual for about five minutes,” Adam chirps.

Charlie doesn’t take the bait. “I think you’re sick of it, too, Adam. I think it’s been getting to you for a while. And, yes. Not today, not this week, but I am going to make you choose.” 

Adam refuses to meet his eyes, so Charlie drops his hand and walks back across the grass to the cliff edge. 

“I fucking hate it when you do that,” Adam says, not even sure to what he is referring.

Charlie shrugs and throws him that charming grin. “Looking down from the top is the worst part,” he says. “As long as you jump far out and keep your legs straight, the landing doesn’t hurt at all.” With that, Charlie disappears over the edge; a splash and a distant whoop follow after. 

Adam remembers, all of a sudden, that day in Dean Buckley’s office at Eden Hall — it was twenty _years_ ago now. “Mr. Banks,” Dean Buckley had said, “if Mr. Conway jumped off the Stone Arch Bridge, would you follow after him?”

“Yes, sir,” Adam had said. “I believe I would.”

Gently, Adam places the insulated tumbler of tea on the grass by his feet. The edge of the cliff is about six yards away, and Adam takes them at a run so he can’t look down.

Then, at last, he follows Charlie over the edge, into the frigid waters below.


End file.
